Human Rights

Hollywood actor Christian Bale was roughed up by Chinese security guards as he attempted to visit a blind legal activist whose detention has sparked a domestic and international outcry, CNN reported on Friday.

The largest civil rights group in America, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), is petitioning the UN over what it sees as a concerted efforted to disenfranchise black and Latino voters ahead of next year's presi...

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, considered a reformer by the standards of his own ultraconservative kingdom, decreed on Sunday that women will for the first time have the right to vote and run in local elections due in 2015.

Although Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has championed women’s rights from Azerbaijan to Zambia, it took her weeks to respond to an appeal to publicly support a campaign by Saudi women to be permitted to drive.

A campaign has been launched on Facebook calling for men to beat Saudi women who drive their cars in a planned protest next month against the ultra-conservative kingdom's ban on women taking the wheel.

This year’s election for the U.N. Human Rights Council has, once again, produced a body that has fewer “free” countries – 21 of a total of 47 – and has more than one-third of the seats held by members of the Islamic bloc.

The African nation of Congo has been called the worst place on earth to be a woman. A new study released Wednesday shows that it's even worse than previously thought: 1,152 women are raped every day, a rate equal to 48 per hour.

The United Nations' top human rights official called on the United States on Tuesday to give the U.N. details about Osama bin Laden's killing and said that all counter-terrorism operations must respect international law.

The brutal crackdown by Syrian President Bashar Assad may finally be getting the attention of world leaders -- but apparently not enough to stop Syria from becoming the newest member of the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The United States will come under the spotlight at the UN's top human rights assembly's for the first time over the coming week along with other countries that face scrutiny by the Human Rights Council.

The Obama administration has told the United Nations that America's human rights record is less than perfect while stressing that the U.S. political system has built-in safeguards that promote improvements.

Two Americans were driving back to El Paso, Texas, last December after an afternoon across the border in Ciudad Juárez. A few blocks from the border, they were surrounded by Mexican army trucks and pulled from their Dodge Ram.